WHY DON’T YOU
My father was born at the bottom of a hill: in a basement, where the landlord didn’t allow visitors. He had brown fingers, even then. At the top of the hill was where the mafia lived, or at least the rich people. It went down in wealth from there. He liked to say this at dinner. Feel more sorry for yourself, why don’t you, my mother said. She threw salad on his plate. Lorris had his fork and knife in his hand. I left, or I would leave, or I walked out again.
Natalia and I drank Coca-Cola in the oval in Marine Park. People played cricket there, between the baseball fields, but later it emptied out, and we brought drinks from the Russian teahouse. Inside they only used plastic cups, even though it was a nice restaurant. We mixed the soda with vodka from the liquor store down the block. On weekends, when she had no homework, we went into the city, to Times Square, no transfer on the Q. At the Marriott Marquis we rode the glass elevators up and down. We kissed pushed up against the glass, watching the hotel lounge get small below us. On every fifth floor there were platforms where you could see the lobby and Forty-Second Street. It’s incredible, isn’t it? Natalia said. It’s like from an airplane. The cars were black and small from so far up. We stood with our noses pressed against the double windowpane and watched the lights change on Broadway. In Brooklyn, in the middle of the park, the cars on the avenues sounded like waves.
I met Natalia one night, at a friend’s house, out in Sheepshead Bay. It was an exact replica of Marine Park, except the houses were smaller and closer together. We picked up forties from the corner store next to the House of Calamari, and my friend, who was born in Moscow, used a fake Russian passport to buy our beer. Why don’t you get a fake ID like a normal person? I asked him. He muttered in Russian. When he went back to Moscow, the one time, he told me once, people had tried to kidnap him, but when he answered in their own language they started laughing and shouting. They offered him a sandwich and let him go. It was thick bread, one layer of spreading. We sat in his parents’ basement and drank from coffee mugs, listening quietly to his mother yelling at his father upstairs. He turned his head up to the ceiling like he was baring his neck. Shut the fuck up! Company. There were other Russians there, and they didn’t react, and all of them spoke English.
Natalia came with four other girls, and they all had dresses on. The only girls who wore dresses at our high school were from Russia. They all gave my friend and the other Russians kisses on the cheek, but they shook my hand, except for Natalia, who pulled me close so I could smell her hair. Hello, she said quietly. She was from Rockaway, but because the schools were so bad there, her parents drove her in to Madison. The only thing they knew about Madison was that U.S. senators were graduates. Three, but it didn’t mean much of anything. They’d been musicians in Russia, but here they were computer engineers.
We were doing bar curls with the exercise equipment that my friend had in his basement. I was skinny from running track. The girls sat at the table with the plastic cover and played cards. We were outside, kneeling in his backyard, the smell of rain and fresh dirt around us, the smoke curling up to the second floor, the tendrils out of his open mouth. Here, he said. Come on. The toilet porcelain was cool and fresh when I laid my head against it, between heaves. Only Natalia knocked on the door, and whispered to ask if I needed something. For a moment I thought I did, but I didn’t know what to tell her.
The walk home was cold, though I didn’t feel it. When I woke up still clutching the toilet, and came out of the bathroom, my friend was asleep, lying with his back on the floor, the other Russians clustered around him. Two of the girls were on the couches, and one was in the middle of the Russians’ embrace. Natalia was asleep with her head against the wall. I put my shoes on without waking anyone, and when I left the screen door banged, and I couldn’t find the Q train. I worried that I hadn’t locked the door, and that someone would break in and it would be my fault. I asked a strange figure for directions, and my voice sounded wrong in my ears. He didn’t know. When I got home, the light was starting, and the old faces on the trees stared me down. Lorris woke me up, hanging on my shoulder, saying that I was supposed to hit him ground balls in the park. He woke up early, and did push-ups between meals. He wanted to make varsity when he got to high school. That morning I told him I was too tired, and he left without asking again, taking the bucket of balls to hit off the tee. I only asked for Natalia’s number the next Monday at school, from my friend who hadn’t asked how I got home. He pulled his phone out of his pocket along with the fake passport. It didn’t look real, even though I’d never seen a Russian passport. Here, he said. But do you want it?